I LOVE this thread! Dogs teach us so much, including valuable lessons about our own personalities. Jenkins was a stray and we are VERY lucky that he is so well adjusted and relatively issue free. Having fosters has really shown me how important it is to find the right "match." What I've mainly learned from working in rescue and having had several kinds of dogs in my home:

1. Be Honest with Yourself About Your Lifestyle.

I do not go jogging or hiking and I hate being outside for very long during the summer months. I should never have a high energy dog. During the summer I lather on the sunscreen, put on the baseball cap and sweat out a 30 minute walk for Jenkins and luckily that's just enough to keep him well behaved. In the rescue I work with I've seen both dogs that I know I couldn't foster because of their exercise needs and also the effect not getting enough exercise can have on a dog.

2. Understand YOUR Dog and Look Beyond Your Own "Common Sense"

One of the best ones mentioned is the "I knew a _____ once and ever since then I've always wanted one..." This also extends to the assumptions many people make based soley on the few dogs they've known in their life. There are people think that its fine for ANY dog to be off leash because the ones they've known have been fine or because that's the way they were raised. One thing everybody learns from reading the forums on Dogster is that you don't know everything! I switched my dog's food after joining Dogster because I learned I was ASSUMING I was feeding him good food. I learned I could give him much better food and now do. Understanding that different dogs have different needs (even dogs of the same breed) and that the conclusions you come to about dogs in general based soley on the ones you've encountered can be a narrow point of veiw are two things that you should always be concience of.

Honey, I guess it just all depends on how a rescue is structured. If the person "in charge" or the one that started the rescue is the one doing the collecting then I'd say there isn't really any checks and balances in place. Also, if a rescue is a bunch of people that keep dogs at their house and have the last say as to who gets their dogs, that can set someone up for hoarding too.

Our rescue works like this: There are application screeners, foster homes, volunteers, and the Director. I foster dogs. I get a say about who gets to adopt them, but I don't get to make the final decision. That is up to the screeners and the Director. If that isn't okay with me then I can't foster any dogs. This structure certainly keeps anyone from hoarding as long as they continue to work with the rescue. But that is a highly organized rescue with many volunteers, lots of areas don't have those kinds of resources.

Like Storm said, the term "hoarder" is more a diagnosis for a very very small percentage of people. There is a difference between being picky about who you adopt dogs to, and being a hoarder. That may be a rationalization a hoarder could use, but it does not immediately imply that everyone that seems to be too picky about placing pets is a hoarder.

This site is very intersting, especially the Salon.com article (first link in list) . The psychological disorder of hoarding animals often involves things like dead bodies of animals all over the house. This is not the same as an overly picky rescue!